


Temporal Sunset

by Plajus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cancer, Established Relationship, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8688634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plajus/pseuds/Plajus
Summary: Dave is just doing everything he can for the love of his life who's slowly disappearing in his arms.





	1. Chapter 1

The buzz is soft in the room, and you drag the electric shaver slowly back along his head. It leaves gentle, red lines along his scalp. You go back down the middle first, forehead to neck, and then work down the right side, starting at his temple and then above his ear. 

“Maybe we should leave it like this,” you say. “One side undercut. My white, genderbend Sombra.” 

“That was the stupidest and longest stretch,” Dirk says. “Keep going.” 

“Fine.” 

So you keep going. You continue with the left side of his head, shaving the hair away. The blond locks fall to the tiled floor, and Dirk stares at his reflection in the mirror without any expression. When you tug on his hair to make closer shaves, some of the hair comes out as if he’s a dog shedding his winter coat. Dirk sees the easily-lost hair stuck between your fingers, but he doesn’t say anything. You just continue. 

You’re working around his left ear when he finally says, “Sometimes the chemo effects hair in weird ways. This girl at the hospital, she was getting hers at the same time as me, and I asked if she only lost the hair on her head, and she told me she lost her armpit hair and her pubic hair, but all of her leg hair stayed.” 

“Are you hoping for the same or the opposite?” 

“I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get. It’s hard to shave around the dick anyway.” 

You chuckle, your fingers stroking softly around his ear. “Maybe if you stop shaving your dick. You’ve been watching too much gay porn. Contrary to popular belief, people who are designated male at birth often end up growing hair around their peen.” 

Dirk waves his arm out, as if he’s drawing an arch in the air. “’The More You Know.’” 

You’ve finished the last part at the nape of his neck, leaving his head bare and smooth. The buzz of the razor turns off and you set it aside, your hand stroking the soft fuzz that’s left. You hold his jaw and lean down, pressing your lips to his head. 

“Gay,” he says. 

“Love you,” you say. 

“This is dumb,” he says. “Ever heard of Bildungsroman?” 

“No.” 

“It’s the fancy word that stands for the ‘coming of age’ trope. Like in books and stuff. Stories about someone growing up. There’s things that have to happen in the coming of age trope. Like, first kisses and first crushes. Maybe first period, or puberty things. Maybe a fight with a parent. You follow?” 

“Mm-hm.” 

“Is this a cancer Bildungsroman? Should the hair cutting be dramatic or some shit?” 

You shrug and rest your chin in Dirk’s head so that you both can meet eyes through the mirror. Your fingertips stroke along his throat. He touches your hand. 

“Doesn’t have to be,” you finally answer. “It’s really exhausting to just cry and be depressed every single day. I’m not saying you’re wrong to do so if you want to, but it is exhausting. So if you don’t wanna be dramatic about this, then that’s fine with me. Because if you want me to be honest, I really wanna jump onto Amazon and get you, like, a Yugi wig or something.” 

“I hate you, and it’s because you suggested Yugi instead of Naruto.” 

You snort and push up on Dirk’s chin gently, just making it a suggestion to tip his head back. He gives into your touches so easily though, and he obeys to look up at you. You kiss his forehead and then his nose, and then reach his lips. He purses his lips, and you just let them slide together and touch for a few seconds before sucking his upper lip in. You want to keep kissing longer and longer, but Dirk speaks in a muffled way into your mouth. 

“Is this move called the Spider-Man?” 

You scoffed against his tongue that licks your nose as a joke and you give his ear a tug because you can’t tug on his hair anymore. 

“Clean your mouth. I’ll clean up,” you say.

Dirk gets out of the kitchen chair you had dragged into the bathroom. He’s been spending a lot more time in your room the last few months, so his mouth wash is on the counter already. He hopes up and begins to swish the liquid in his mouth while you drag the chair out of the way and get the broom that you had sitting against the wall. Since his chemo started, Dirk started getting sores in his mouth. Now he brushed three times a day, and there were three extra bottles of mouth wash in the cabinet. 

You put the hair on the floor into a Wal-Mart bag. You grab just a bit of it and stuff it in your pocket. Dirk sees this and you shrug before throwing the rest in the garbage. Dirk spits the mouth wash out, and you kiss his mint-mouth, and his fingers tangle in your hair. 

 

 

At night, you watch him. You put your head on your arm and lay on your side, staring. He sleeps a lot now. He always sleeps with his mouth open, but he never snores, and that’s a reason you love him. You reach out and you touch his bare head where there’s not even peach fuzz anymore. It’s all gone. 

You stroke the skin and then to the back of his neck and along his jaw. He sucks in a breath and his eyes open just a slit. 

“Hn.” 

“Hey. Sorry. Go back to sleep,” you whisper. 

“Hm.” 

He tilts his head, kissing your thumb, and then passes out very easily again. You used to stroke his hair for hours when he was a sick as a child, because it always put him to sleep, but as a director you’re very good at changing things and editing things so that scenes still make sense to the audience, and Dirk is still the most gorgeous thing to ever walk the planet to you. 

You pet along his head and decide you’ll buy him some beanies soon. He’s always cold these days. He looks good in sweaters though. You kiss against his bottom lip. 

“Gay,” he whispers. 

Your amused laugh is just a sigh. You put an arm around him and leave it there, letting him use your neck as a warm hat. 

 

 

You have sex on a very sunny morning. Dirk is thin and heavy under you and his sunset eyes are full of tears as he moans towards the ceiling. The cars are honking outside, a crow caws from the balcony, and your mouth makes itself at home on Dirk’s chest and along his neck and up the ridges of his throat. 

He’s shaky when it’s over, and you stay inside him a while, hands braced next to his head while he pants and holds your wrists. His fingers are bony, and you can see his ribs when he rests his arms up over his head. Like his friend from the chemo appointment, he lost all hair except for on his legs, where the strands are blond and soft. 

You kiss his knee and stare. He’s not paying attention to you. He’s looking towards the window, calming his panting and brushing his hand back along his scalp, and the morning sun lights up his eyes, and it’s like the sun has transferred itself into his eyes, and he holds the heat of the world inside his precious skull where the masses are. 

The masses doing this to him. 

“What?” Dirk says. 

“Hm?” 

“You’re staring. Should I tell you to take a picture?” 

“Can I?”

“What?” 

“Can I take a picture of you right now?” 

Dirk reaches for the washcloth that’s on the nightstand. You put it there before you woke him up with a million kisses, your hands all over his body. He wipes away the mess on his chest and you finally throw away the condom after tying it off. You hear the sound as it hits the bottom of the garbage, and Dirk says at the same time, “Sure.” 

You don’t want to get your nice camera, so you use your phone. Whether he’s ignoring you or posing on purpose, he looks wonderful. He’s closing his eyes and just relaxing, as if he might sink into the bed like quicksand, and his pale skin stretches over his bones, each and every freckle prominent. The sun looks so warm on his flesh. When you’re done taking pictures of him, you feel like a cat as you lay on top of him, soaking in the warmth and pressing kisses down his neck. 

“Too tired,” he mumbles. “No round two.” 

“I’ll do all the work,” you say. 

“Promise?” 

“Oh yeah.”

“Make me coffee after.” 

“Fine.”

“Okay.” 

 

 

Dirk graduates on a Tuesday, and you give him a blow job while he’s in his suit, and he keeps saying he hates you with his hands tight in your hair and his moans high. 

You fix him up after. While he cleans his mouth out with the minty mouthwash you re-do his tie and smooth down his vest, telling him to shut up when he complains that he’s just going to be wearing the gown over his outfit anyway. 

He takes a few prescriptions before you both head off. You drive him there and Dirk slips his shades on and keeps using the rear view mirror as his own personal mirror to fix his graduation cap and mess with his tie—the tie you had perfected. Now you’ll have to fix it again and Dirk is going to whine like a child. 

You take three million pictures, give or take, of your baby boy taking the stage. More than a few people clap when they call his full name. Maybe because he’s part of the Strider name. Maybe it’s pity claps. You cheer the loudest. 

Dirk complains about them later when you take him out to Orange Leaf. He’s still in his gown, but he ditched the graduation cap in the car and put on one of the black beanies you bought him. He sucks at the spoon of orange-flavored frozen yogurt and speaks with a full mouth after, “Only families of the kid are supposed to clap, otherwise the entire auditorium claps for an entire hour, and I had only about three good friends in that high school, so it’s dumb that so many clapped without knowing me. It’s like when they clapped for the special ed students. They don’t even know them.” 

“It’s a confidence booster,” you try saying with a shrug. You got Coke-flavored frozen yogurt, but you’re regretting it. You instead eat all the gummy worms you had dumped on top. 

“The special ed kids get bullied all the time, it’s bullshit. Suddenly they’re equal to the whole school ‘cuz parents and school board members are watching? No. Calling big ol’ bullshit. I’ve got his number on speed-dial. The poop emoji is his main name. He’s using up all my minutes and I’ve gotta call Sprint all the time to change my plan because I’m calling bullshit twenty-four/seven.” 

“Did you hear me clap?” you ask before he continues. 

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so fuck everyone else. You finished. You’re done. High school degree.” 

“Which is also dumb, because I could have graduated five years ago or something.” 

“You chose not to skip grades, smarty-pants.” 

“The American education system is fucked up,” Dirk says with another angry slurp of his spoon. 

“Yeah, I know, and so is capitalism. And the media. So is gender construction. But here we are and you’re done. And you’re eating frozen yogurt. So not everything is bad.” 

“And I’m going to die.” 

Your eyebrows knit together at the same time you feel a dip in your gut. The dip comes back up though, and it sits in your throat, and now the gummy worms don’t even taste good. Now they taste like parasites that are eating you alive inside your stomach. But maybe that’s how Dirk feels with the masses eating away inside of his brain. 

“Sorry,” Dirk mutters after he sees your reaction. 

“There’s still a chance, but then you say shit like that.” 

“Less than ten percent isn’t a chance,” he scoffs. 

“My yogurt tastes like shit,” you say, and you stand up to go throw it away. Dirk waits for you to sit down again, but you go outside instead so that you can wait in the car, your longer fingers tightening on the wheel and your leg shaking nervously. You turn the radio on, but you hate every song that plays, so you turn it off again. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. He’s the one suffering, and you fucking hate yourself for hurting so much. He’s the one who should be comforted for being terrified, not you. You don’t have terminal shit in your brain.

You want to go Hulk and flip this entire car over and punch a hole through it, but it was sixty thousand dollars, so you don’t. You decide to bite on your thumb, but the passenger side door opens and Dirk slips in. He buckles up and kicks his graduation cap away from his feet, putting a dirt stain on it. 

“I wanna watch The Room when we get home,” he says. 

“We have a wall of movies and you want to look at Tommy Wiseau’s ass?” 

“Those re-used circular butt motions turn me on. What can I say?” 

“You could say sorry.”

“For what?” 

“For… liking Tommy Wiseau.”

“It’s just that…” He sighs heavily and itches his head under his beanie before pulling the hat back down again. “The Room is on the shelf, and it’s stuck there in our home, and we can’t get rid of it. No one would buy it. So we’re stuck with The Room. Which means we have to learn to live with it. By making jokes about it. Or sometimes acknowledging the truth that it’s there. Because we can’t ignore it. We can’t ignore Tommy Wiseau in The Room.” 

You pause a long time, and Dirk says nothing, because you both just… know. Your fingers move in a wave, stretching at the pinkie first and then tightening down on the steering wheel again. You still feel sick to your stomach, but when you glance at Dirk his gorgeous face and his handsome body make you smile. 

“Directed by Tommy Wiseau,” you say. 

He finally smiles back at you. “Produced by Tommy Wiseau.” 

“Written by Tommy Wiseau.” 

“Your own The Room DVD was personally licked by Tommy Wiseau.” 

“Fuck the hole of the DVD and Tommy Wiseau will show up to personally watch The Room, starring Tommy Wiseau, with you.” 

Dirk laughs and you wonder why that lovely sound can’t just heal his lovely mind. 

 

 

Dirk is in shit condition after chemo appointments. You’ve recently had a new movie come out, and you hated it, so you’re only busy here and there, and you’re home when the sun is down and the nightly news is playing and Dirk’s dinner plate is empty. He’s pale and thin and he’s wrapped in blanket. You’re holding him in your lap as if he’s a child, his head on your shoulder and eyes closed. He’s so cold. 

“’Should shower,” he murmurs. 

“You’re too tired. And you just ate; you might throw up.” 

“It’s been four days.” 

“You said you showered two days ago. Remember? ‘Cause I called you before my interview and you said ‘Yeah, I just hopped out of the shower.’” 

He says nothing. 

“Ah, so we’re at the lying stage.” 

“Please. I smell like shit,” he begs, but his voice is exhausted. 

Fine. You’ll lecture him another time. 

The apartment is in dim light as you keep Dirk in your arms and carrying him down to the bathroom. You turn the heater on in there so that Dirk isn’t shivering like a Chihuahua when you undress him, but you can tell he’s cold as you slip the blanket off of his shoulders and then start lifting his shirt. 

He has random bruises. They come easily now, sometimes when you hold him too hard during sex, or when he bumps the counter. He wraps his arms around himself when you drop the shirt with the blanket and then cradle his jaw, kissing slowly at his forehead and inhaling. You can smell that he hasn’t showered, but for some reason you love that smelly smell. You’re so scared you’ll forget all of his smells. 

“Hurry,” he says quietly. “I’m cold.”

“I know,” you whisper. 

You kiss his head again, take his beanie off, and then kiss the bare skin. You untie his sweatpants next and let those slip down. You remember him when he was a child and you had to give him baths. When he was three, running around the old apartment naked with his underwear on his head, squealing and waving a Barbie around like it was a sword. It makes you smile for a few moments as you get him completely naked. Your precious, thin child stands there in a pile of his clothes, shivering and holding himself. He’s horribly gorgeous. 

You turn the faucet on in the large tub and plug the bottom. Dirk asks if he’s taking a shower or not and you say that you’ll just give him a hot bath and that the doctor said it was good for his sore muscles. He doesn’t protest. 

Your clothes join his on the floor. Naked, waiting for the tub to fill, you put your warm feet on top of his cold toes and wrap your arms around him. He burrows into your chest, nose on your shoulder, and the tip of it feels like ice. 

“I heard you crying at night,” Dirk whispers above the roaring faucet. “It’s why I lie.” 

“I hear you vomit at night,” you say. “So no lying.” 

He pauses. He tucks his arms in between both of your chests for more warmth before he makes a very light nod. “All right.” 

With a few more minutes of holding him and breathing, the tub fills, the top of the water steaming. You turn the faucet on and hold Dirk’s elbow and hand, being his anchor as he steps into the water. He tries to keep it quiet, but you can hear his sigh of relief. You help him sit. You stroke his scalp. 

“Come in,” he says. 

You do. You slip in beside him, making the steaming water rise a few more inches. 

“At least we’re saving money on shampoo,” he says. 

“Shut up,” you snort. 

He smiles at you and you use body wash on a sponge, getting every inch of him you can. It’s pointless to scrub someone’s elbow, or their tummy, but you want it to last forever. He stares into the water, and then he stares at you while you lift one of his feet out of the water and clean between each toe and up along his shin where his pale leg hair stayed. You kiss his calf and then his knee before lowering his leg back into the water, making the chilly goosebumps go away. Dirk is still staring at you, just the tips of his knees above the surface. You glide through the water to him, gently resting your chest on his. 

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hey,” you say. “Am I too heavy?” 

“No. The water helps. You’re fine.” 

“Good.” 

You move in to kiss him, but he catches your cheeks. He just holds you there. He begins to touch you. He strokes your jawline and then he brushes his lips down the slope of your nose. 

You feel like you’re being blessed. You hardly breathe, not wanting him to stop. The water makes the gentlest noises as he moves, the heater still humming above, and he kisses at your eyelids. His fingertips trace your eyebrows and your nostrils and the curve of your ear. He kisses the side of your nose, and your eyes water, and you gulp on a sob. 

“Shh” comes softly from his lips. 

“Dirk,” you beg. Your fingers grip his sides, bracing on his fragile ribs, like a beautiful antique bird cage. 

“I’m so in love with you,” he says. His voice is hardly a breath. Only you’re allowed to hear him. Not even God. “My everything,” he adds. 

You’re so scared to move. You want to crush him into your chest, but he’s still blessing your face, and you grow goosebumps along your skin when he draws the tip of his nose down the side of your neck. He presses a slow, slow kiss to your throat, and you swallow under his mouth. 

“Please,” you say. 

When his movements finally move just a little faster than normal, you know it’s permission. Like you’re a trained dog waiting to eat the treat on your nose. You slip your arms around his middle, your entire face hidden in the curve of his neck. You can feel his spine, which sticks out like the ridges of your throats, and you kiss where you feel a tendon that’s relaxing. 

You stay with him in there for a long time. Your fingers turn into old granny wrinkles. When Dirk grows cold, you drain the tub and hold him tight as you fill it with fresh, hot water again. Dirk jokes about you two being the reason there’s a California drought and you smother kisses into his face until your lips meet and you both make out for a long three minutes. Then you turn him around and massage his back. You massage both of his feet too while he rests his head back on the tub rim and talks about some reality show he was watching, and then he talks about a new theory he read about online, and then his memory issues kick in and he stares at the ceiling nervously for a while, not finding the right words. 

He doesn’t panic like he usually does when his memory leaves. It’s a very short episode. He blinks at you, starting to freak out, and you mutter softly that he’s okay, that his memory will come back, and in another five seconds he calms down and his expression turns into the Dirk you know and love. He simply goes back to resting and talking. 

He’s exhausted when you know it’s time to get out. You leave him in the tub so you can dry off first and then scoop him out, just like when he was a child. You sit him on the floor on a towel and use a second one to pat his legs dry, his belly, and up his back and at his scalp. He’s like a ragdoll in your hands, he’s so tired. 

You dress him in a warm sweater, sweatpants, and his socks and his beanie. You pick him up, put him on the counter, and keep him conscious long enough to use mouthwash and also take his prescriptions. He has issues getting one of the pills down, but once he does you take him into your room and tuck him into your bed. Instinct almost tells you to find a bedtime story book. 

He smells like coconut as you rub your nose to his smooth forehead. You pull the blanket up over him. You get dressed with just the lamp on as he breaths with sleep, but once you finish changing you turn to see his eyes open just a slit. When you both stare at each other, he smiles. Like he knows something you don’t. 

“What?” you say. 

He keeps smiling and then he tucks half of his face into the pillow and closes his eyes, officially passing out. After some snacks, some AJ, some teeth brushing, some friend-texting and some door-locking you’re into bed with him. You turn the lamp off. You kiss his face. He tucks his toes against your legs. Your earth is suffering, but your sunsets keep rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Dirk is over 18) You can ask me questions, or check for updates on the fic at my tumblr, plajus.tumblr.com! c: don't worry, i won't take months to write another chapter; i'll do my best to keep up with this! c:


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's getting worse.

You haven’t made a new movie in a few months now. Reporters and paparazzi keep asking when you’ll come back, and if you have scripts in the making, but you wave them off and say you’ll share eventually. You know Dirk wants to ask too. Because of your promise with him, you’d tell him the truth if he asked. But he doesn’t ask. He knows. 

Besides, you like all the time at home. You used to kiss Dirk’s sleeping face and leave him notes before heading to work. Sometimes his insomnia kicked in, or he was nauseas and he took showers with you at five in the morning before you took off. 

Now you sleep in with him. Every morning you wake up to his face. Sometimes you wake up to hear him vomiting, and you don’t go back to sleep under it’s all over and he’s back in bed with you. His vomiting his normal, but you hate sleeping while he’s going through it. Sometimes he’s shaky or exhausted after, and you just want to be around. 

One morning, he’s not there with you in bed. You hum and stretch out, hand rubbing over the spot of your bed that has finally started smelling like Dirk all the time. He’s started using his room for projects mostly, and he even moved his gaming consoles to the main living room so that you two can be around each other more often. Half of the closet is dedicated to his clothes now. 

You laze around for another five minutes before getting out of bed. You flatten out your hair, pull some sweatpants up over your boxers and leave it at that before heading out in search of your little brother. His room is empty except for some music playing from a robot that’s lying on half on the floor, wires out and tools spread around. You find a button that turns the music off and then check the living room and the kitchen. That’s when your fear kicks in. 

“Dirk?” you call out. 

You hear a muffled “yeah” and your heart relaxes. 

Next to the kitchen you look out the double glass doors that lead to the balcony. Dirk is sitting on one of the porch chairs, a blanket around him, his hat on, and a steaming mug between his bony fingers. He smiles and gives you a wave to show you he’s okay. 

You wave back. 

You get your fancy camera that you keep in your closet and go back to the balcony to take pictures of Dirk, sipping his coffee and staring out at the city that’s just starting to wake up. There’s still a groggy fog resting between the buildings. You used to be so careful about the pictures you took, terrified that people would find out about you and Dirk, but you love him more than the rest of the world. Dirk wants you to get back into art and photography. In this case, he can’t complain about you taking pictures of him. 

After putting your camera aside, you make breakfast burritos. Eggs, bacon and sausage wrapped in tortillas. You pour Sunny D for Dirk and go out onto the balcony, putting his plate and drink on the small table between the two porch chairs. You also put down his prescriptions. You sit in your own chair and relax, nodding to Dirk’s thank you as you both eat in silence. 

You hear the pills rattle before Dirk swallows them with his drink. Both of your plates are empty. He puts his hand on the small table and you extend your own hand, lacing your fingers together so that you can stroke your thumb along his smooth, cold skin. The fog is disappearing, and you can see the rising sun. 

 

 

Dirk was diagnosed at thirteen, and you first kissed him when he was sixteen. He had just celebrated how awesome it was to be an official teenager, and then on Christmas day he had his first seizure. Neither of you genuinely celebrated Christmas, but you liked doing random traditional things together. You liked putting up the tree and you both liked the idea of getting gifts, and Dirk liked the story behind the menorah. 

Rose and Roxy had come over for the holidays that year. Rose had knitted Dirk an ironic sweater that said “Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas,” and while young Roxy was laughing and Dirk was trying to pull it on with a smile, he froze up. 

You remember it so vividly. The way his fingers curled like malfunctioning joints; the way his jaw locked up; the way his arms came in, as if he were reaching for something that wasn’t there. Then he rolled to his back, rocking on his spine. Then the jerking started. Roxy told him to stop kidding around and Rose’s smile was going away, growing concerned, and you were the one to know that this wasn’t normal as soon as it was happening. 

Roxy said it was a seizure when you reached him. She was a smart cookie, and she told you to put him on his side. He was so much smaller than he is now, but he still had his weight and his muscles and flushed colors in his light skin. 

Your heart hurt so much. You remember how much he wheezed, and how wide his eyes were. You cradled his head that he kept trying to throw against the hardwood floor. He was suddenly the most fragile thing you had ever seen in your life. 

Rose called 911. Roxy pulled up some seizure instructions online and was telling you what to do. You kept talking over her, talking to Dirk to try and make him stop as if your voice could cease what his brain was doing. 

“Ask him his name,” Roxy said. 

“I know his fucking name.” 

“It’s what the site says! Make sure he’s mentally there! I’m thirteen, don’t snap at me!” 

“Sorry. Sorry, Rox.” 

So you obeyed her, because she was the one with the website on her phone, and you looked down at your baby boy. His legs kicked and Roxy scooted away from them. Rose was saying your address into your phone. 

“What’s your name?” you tried asking him. It felt wrong. 

With the harshest wheeze, as if there were dry mountain ranges down his throat, he said “Bro.” 

Your eyes watered and you held his cheek. “I’m right here. I’m right here, baby.” 

 

 

Dirk was quiet and shaky to the hospital, and you sat with him in the ambulance, holding his hand. You kissed his little fingers. He kept looking at everything. The stupid kid was probably more interested in learning about the technology in the vehicle than learning about why the fuck he had a seizure. 

The doctor told you before they told Dirk. They told you outside of his hospital room where Dirk and Roxy were skyping on the phone with Jane and Jake. Rose was with you. She had an arm around your middle, and you remember her lips against your shoulder as the doctor said that Dirk was growing masses in his brain. 

You told Dirk when it was just the two of you in the dark hospital room around midnight. You held his hand that wasn’t shaking finally. He took it better than you. 

 

 

Dirk has a seizure in the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. Everyone freaks out except for you. Someone calls an ambulance before you can tell them to stop. You stay on the floor in front of the frozen dinners, holding his head close so he doesn’t hurt his already hurt brain. 

You two are used to the treatment in the ambulance. Outside, people get pictures of you and you do what you can to cover Dirk’s face. He gets some treatment, and you both refuse the ambulance ride with annoyance and get back into your car. You kiss Dirk’s head and tell him to keep drinking water while you go finish buying the groceries you both left inside of the store. 

That night you both are on the news. 

“Stupid,” Dirk says. “Stupid. They have better things they could be doing. It’s stupid.” 

“I’ll see what I can do. I know people.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Dirk sighs. He wraps the couch blanket around him and sinks into your side. You put your arm around him and smooch at his forehead and his cheek and his lips.

“You sure?” you ask. 

“Yeah. Just wanna relax and watch Chopped or something.” 

“Chopped Junior?” 

“Hell yeah. It’s so much chiller.” 

“Hey.” 

“Hm,” he hums, already changing the channel. 

“I love you.” 

“That’s fucking gay.” 

“Dirk.” 

He flips channels, but slower. He could easily put in the number of the channel or look it up on Netflix, but you’re pretty sure he’s trying to avoid looking at you. He swallows and keeps pushing the down arrow, his thin hand sticking out from under the big knit blanket that gets used almost every single day. 

Then he turns his head and puts his lips on your shoulder, his eyes closing. You think about the way Rose held you when you were first told your baby boy was sick. 

“I know,” he mutters. Your shirt absorbs his warm breath and soaks into your skin. “I know,” he says again. “I know you do. I know, Bro. I know.” 

Thank God. You drag him into your lap and clutch with the strength he doesn’t have. 

 

 

You take Dirk to the zoo. You both wear fake glasses, and you put in brown eye contacts so that you two can enjoy the day together without anyone asking for a selfie. You don't hate fans. You just want to go to the zoo with your brother.

You push Dirk in a wheelchair since you know he can't walk all day. These days, the most he can do is go to the store for an hour before he's panting. You tell him the wheelchair is bitchin', and that you two can put stickers on it and paint it and put really ironic shit on it. Maybe some tassels, like on little pink bikes. All the joking around helps Dirk stop feeling so embarrassed about the fact that he needs a wheelchair. 

On little hills, you get to ride on it too, so you're not complaining. 

With no one recognizing you two, Dirk reaches a hand up to hold yours on the wheelchair handle. You're both on a tall platform that puts you at the height of the giraffe's heads not too far away. You lean down and kiss Dirk's knuckles while a wild bird starts teasing one of those beautifully tall creatures, and you can hear the smile in Dirk's chuckle. 

He likes it inside the buildings. Like where they keep fish, reptiles and birds. He likes the dim lighting with the glows inside of the cages that hold nocturnal animals. You like to see every single animal, but Dirk chooses specific ones and then ends up staring at them for a long time. By the time you're done looking at all the rodents, you turn to see Dirk still in his wheelchair, forehead pressed against the glass as he holds eye contact with a sleepy fennec fox. You kiss his head and stare for a while with him before carrying on. 

You eventually reach the exhibit for the polar bears, but there's a sign up on the wall that says the zoo had to euthanize one of the polar bears because of a tumor, and that they're keeping the sister polar bear away from the public eye while she grieves. Neither of you comment on it. You just push him on ahead while Dirk puts his hand in his palm. You wonder what he's thinking. Or what his expression is. 

“Lunch?” you ask. 

“Yeah.” 

You find a table underneath some shelter so that you both can get some shade. You eat chips and baggies of fruit and sandwiches that you slapped together that morning. You watch Dirk take his prescriptions with a water bottle. He's staring at a group of kids playing around a fountain, trying to splash each other and guess when the next eruption will be. You take your phone out and get a few pictures of him. Then he notices you. He frowns, but there's no unhappiness in his eyes. He just reaches out, blocking any future pictures. 

“Looks like the sun is gonna come out soon,” you say. It had been gloomy that morning with clouds. 

“We didn't bring sunscreen,” Dirk says.

“If it gets too much we'll head home. I don't need you turning into a tomato.”

“I wanna see the lions. And go through the petting zoo.”

“The petting zoo?”

"Fuck yeah, I'm gonna get my hands on a pony. It's the only pictures I'm allowing you to take of me." 

"I'll take that deal then."

"Shit," he says, putting a hand to his mouth.

You're up and holding his elbow, helping him stand. You get to a garbage can just in time for him to start heaving. Kids stare, and a few parents pretend they aren't staring. You rub Dirk's back and mutter to him that it's all right and you have napkins ready for when he lifts his head up so that you can clean his mouth free of vomit and help him back into the wheelchair. 

"Whoops," he says. 

"It's okay," you say. You give him a small travel-size bottle of mouthwash. And more prescriptions since he probably up-chucked the ones he just took. And another sandwich. 

"You're like an over-prepared mom," Dirk says, "with a diaper bag." 

"How am I over-prepared if you're literally using everything I prepared for? Wash your mouth, whiner." 

He does, and he spits into your empty water bottle so that you can throw it away. You wait for him to eat another sandwich, take his medicine, and wash his mouth a second time before you pack everything up so that you can continue on. 

"Did you know lions are the laziest of big cats?" Dirk says when you two are parked in front of the exhibit. The male and a few females are sunning themselves on a rock, stretched out and tired. 

"Oh yeah?" 

"Yeah. They sleep for about sixteen to twenty hours a day." 

"Sounds like you," you say. 

Dirk whaps your hip from where you're standing by his chair. You smile and rub his shoulder and then the back of his neck. 

Dirk walks for the last half an hour. He holds your hand through all of it, and you struggle to push the wheelchair with one hand because you don't want to let go of his. You only let go so that he can get his hands all over the petting zoo, and it almost feels like he’s a child again as he cradles bunnies, lets baby goats eat from his hands, and smothers his face into the snouts of Shetland Ponies. 

He's exhausted in the car when the evening comes around, and he falls asleep in the passenger's seat with his lips parted and his neck craned to the side. At a stop light you lean over to recline his chair, and he catches your cheek for a kiss before he dozes off again. You put him to bed that night, and after you feel his heart still beating under your head you let him sleep without you bugging him. 

 

 

Dirk and you are doing laundry together. Chores aren’t boring when you do them together. Sometimes you two even wash the dishes by hand rather than use the dishwasher. He loses his memory for thirty seconds. He looks around the room like he’s never seen it before and then looks at you with heaving breaths, and you do what you always do. 

“It’s okay. You just lost your memory. This is our home. You’re okay.” 

When it’s over, he relaxes. He sighs, shakes his head, and continues folding clothes. You two have become a lot cleaner since you’ve been staying at home. You haven’t worked in a long time now. 

 

 

Dirk has a chemo appointment, and the week after is always the worst. You stay up with him at night, spooning him and rubbing his stomach as the nausea takes him. You smooth your hands along his back when he vomits into the toilet, or into the designated Barf Bucket. 

Your baby is just tired. He’s so small and so tired. 

You bathe him because he doesn’t have the strength to stand. You turn the shower on, him in a plastic chair, and wash him yourself. He dozes off a few times. You kiss the harsh bumps down his spine. You brush your face on the sharp outline of his shoulder blades and peck his freckles.

“’m scared,” he murmurs over the splashing water. 

You kneel next to him instead of beside him and rub up his thigh, hand stroking his cheek. “What was that, dear?” 

“Scared for you.” 

“Me?” 

“Scared you’re gonna off yourself.” 

“I—” 

You swallow. Dirk is keeping his tired self conscious long enough to keep staring at you. He pushes his fingers through your damp hair and swipes his thumb under your eye. You wish the steaking water could hide what your face is doing, but the swelling of red in your irises probably give everything away. 

“Or you’ll turn into an alcoholic.” 

“Dirk—”

“Or start smoking again.” He sucks in a wheezing breath, and it’s so harsh you put a hand on his chest and tell him to relax. You haven’t smoked since the day he was diagnosed. 

“Don’t push yourself,” you whisper into his ear. You keep him braced to stay sitting up. 

“Please,” he sobs. 

“Baby.” 

“Don’t off yourself. You can—you can be sad. And—and you can drink. It’s okay. Y-you’re allowed to be sad. But no—no offing yourself. No hiding forever. You gotta—g-gotta get out of bed again. Someday. Okay? Gotta paint. A-and take pictures.” 

“Dirk, baby boy,” you breathe into his neck. You hold him, enveloping him into your arms. He’s crying weakly into your shoulder, and you wish you could let him sink into you. You want to give him your life. You want to trade this all. He’s the last one in the world to deserve this. 

“Promise me,” he begs. “Promise me you’ll—you’ll get out of bed again. S-someday. Please, Bro. Please.” 

“I promise.” It hurts so much to say that. You’ve learned to live with the C-word that’s living inside of Dirk’s brain, but you’ve both avoided the D-word for years. You’re so scared. You’re terrified. Oh God. You hold him. You hold your child and breathe him in and imprint him into your flesh and soak into his everything. 

 

 

You dry Dirk off and change him, and you wake him up long enough to wash his mouth and take his pills. Then you let him pass out in your bed. You kiss all over his face while he’s sleeping, make sure his precious heart is beating, and then leave the room. You stick a sweater on and sit out on the balcony, the porch chair next to you empty. 

You call Rose. 

“It’s late as fuck,” Rose says as soon as she answers. “I’m also tired of your rants about how shitty Sausage Party was; please send me an essay.” 

“I can’t do this,” you sob. Your eyes sting, and your face is grossly contorted. 

“Dave?” 

“H-he’s so tiny. Rose. I can’t—I can’t. Can’t.” 

“Who else will?” 

“I know!” You wheeze for breath. Your chest is tight. Rose talks you through a panic attack. You ask her to talk about her day. You breathe erratically as she talks about meeting her publisher, about Roxy teaching her a new video game, about writing another chapter of her next book. When she’s gotten through her whole day, you’ve finally quieted down. 

“Drink water,” Rose says. 

“I know. I read up on so much nurse shit, Lalonde.” 

“Why not get a live-in nurse?” she suggests. 

“God. No. I just… I think he needs my touches. If someone else lives here, I can’t… kiss him. I can’t bathe him anymore. I know it’s horrible, but I… I love to bathe him. It’s so intimate. He’s so pretty. I’m finally useful.”

“Okay. Okay, no nurses. Dave, you can’t prepare for what’s to come. It’s just going to happen.” 

“No, I can’t—”

“Roxy and I have talked about it,” Rose says sternly. “It’s painful. But we’re going to move in with you for a while. A few months probably.” 

Talking about it makes it more real. It hurts everywhere. You whimper and hold your stomach. 

“We’ll move in and we’ll all cope together. When the time comes.” 

“Fuck.” 

“Tell me about your day now.” 

Through thick tears, you do. 

 

 

When the effects of the chemo wear off for a week or two, Dirk games online with his friends. You’re happy to see he’s still socializing. You sometimes worry that he attaches too much to you and that he’s pulling away from his friends, but when you come home with Dirk’s refilled prescriptions you see your little brother laughing into a headset while playing Overwatch. 

He’s beautiful. He’s smiling and focusing, and his fingers are moving strongly for once. You want him. 

You stand behind the couch and put the bag of medicine down. 

“Hi,” Dirk greets. “Also, Roxy, Jane and Jake all say hi too.” 

“Tell them hi,” you say. 

“Dave says hi.” 

You kiss his neck. Dirk turns his head for half a second, expecting this to be a normal “I’m home” kiss, but you hold his jaw and keep your lips crushed together. Dirk mutters into your lips, saying he’s in the middle of a match, but you suck on his bottom lip and you run a hand down his chest, down the skinny dip of his stomach and between his thighs. 

Dirk sucks in against your lips and his character on the screen gets headshot. 

“Be right back,” he says into his headset, and then he turns the console off. You climb onto him quickly, and he lays back, spreading his legs on instinct to let you settle between them. He may be thin, but he fits in your warm arms that way. 

Dirk loves grinding. He tells you it’s the closeness and intimacy that gets him off. The full on flesh-to-flesh rubbing; the weight of being safely pinned by someone he trusts. 

You make long licks up his neck and add wet kisses as your hips settle in and start rolling. His breath comes out in a pant every time. You hike one of his thighs up, making you two rub together through your jeans and his sweatpants. 

His moans give you such energy. They’re soft and constant. You love that he’s more vocal than past men you’ve been with, because you get off to getting him off. Sometimes Dirk feels bad when he’s too exhausted to suck you or give you a hand job when you’re done, and you still struggle to get him to believe you when you say that you’re satisfied from satisfying him. Seeing Dirk’s face when he climaxes and hearing him beg to you in whispers gives you satisfaction you’ve never felt with another lover. 

“I love you,” you whisper into his ear. Your hand slips under his sweater, thumb rubbing and pinching softly at his nipple. He hates when you pinch too hard. 

“Bro,” he whimpers. “Fuck.” 

“Pants?” 

“No. Leave it all on. I wanna—Is that okay?” 

You nod before he even finishes talking. You kiss him hard, and spit drags between your mouths when you pull away. You keep grinding him, pushing your hips down harder, dragging a thigh up between his legs where you can feel his hard-on, and not taking your fingers off his chest or your lips off his neck. He arches his head back, his weak body suddenly frantic as he bucks up into your thigh. His face is flushed red, and you’re positive he’s getting off at the idea that he’s humping you like a dog and that he’s about to finish in his pants.

You put your forehead on his and you just stare at him as he cries out, his entire body tensing up. Maybe you love touching him so much because his orgasms show that he still has strength. You’re fucked up, but you love him. You love him so much. 

He pants hard, and when you glance down you can see the wet spot in his pants. Usually cumming in your pants on a couch was for experimenting high schoolers, but this was kind of hot. 

“You can finish,” Dirk pants. “I’m okay.” 

“You sure?” 

“Mm-hm.”

You kiss him a few times and shiver when he holds at your hair for a few seconds. Then you sit up, taking yourself out to pump your cock above his body and take in how gorgeous he is when he’s spent from the pleasure you give him. You finish on his stomach that’s exposed under his hiked up sweater and feel the end of his name on your tongue. 

You clean him and change his ruined clothes after. You tell him you’re going to do the laundry while you’re at it, but before you leave and let him get back to video games he grabs your shirt and drags you on top of him again. 

He doesn’t want to get off again. He just wants to make out. It’s slow and quiet. Just the smacking of lips and light sucks as you taste each other’s tongues. Dirk still moans a few times, and you cradle his cheeks since he’s your perfect porcelain. 

When the kisses slow down, Dirk speaks against your lips: 

“I love you too.” 

“No way.” 

“Fuck you. You know, I was gaining hours as Junkrat when you rudely interrupted me.” 

“Fuck Junkrat.” 

“Fuck you, we’re breaking up. Get out.” 

You grin and blow a raspberry in his neck. He laughs and holds you as tight as he can for a bit. He kisses at your ear and your head, and you feel blessed again. 

He goes back to his video game. He lies and says he had to throw up and decided to eat again to his friends while you smile and do the laundry. It’s so easy to ignore the D-word on days like this. You make dinner and listen to Dirk game and then later you sit behind him, hands on his hips as your fingers dip under the back of his sweater to massage his back. 

 

 

That night, you’re in bed on your laptop. You rest back in the pillows, one arm up behind your head as you scroll social media, and it’s when you catch Dirk changing above the top of the screen. 

He stands naked in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, using his mouthwash, and then swallowing his medicine. He sees you staring and he smiles. Sometimes you can’t mock each other for gay shit like I’m-so-in-love-stares. 

You can see light bruises on him from earlier on the couch. He has hickeys on his neck. You get your phone out and snap pictures of him. He’s rubbing lotion on cracked parts of his skin, and he starts posing for you, pretending the lotion bottle is a dick, like all white, American boys must do when holding something tube-like. He strikes a rocker pose, the lotion now a microphone. 

When you’re both in bed, he wants to watch Lion King. He must still be thinking about the zoo. While searching YouTube for the movie you see that the history is full of lion and cheetah videos. You play Lion King without commenting and pull him close into your side and hope that you’re rubbing away all of his aches and pains. 

 

 

You start making notes. You write them up on your laptop and then print about twenty of them so that you can tape them up all over the apartment so that Dirk sees them whenever he goes into memory-loss episodes. They all say the same thing: 

 

DIRK  
STAY CALM  
YOU’RE OKAY  
YOU’RE HAVING MEMORY LOSS  
IT WILL PASS  
YOU’RE SAFE  
CALL OUT FOR DAVE 

 

“You didn’t have to add the part about yelling out for you,” Dirk says after you tape them all up. “I’ll be fine once it passes.” 

“I wanna be there for you. I put that there for me. Don’t worry about it.” 

 

 

You wake up in the middle of the night when you feel Dirk getting out of bed. You struggle to stay awake to make sure he gets back into bed all right when he’s done going to the bathroom, puking, or getting a snack; whatever it is this time. You gently rub the warm spot in the bed he left behind. 

You hear the front door of the apartment close. You listen for a few seconds, but it’s silent after. 

Blanket thrown back, you’re out of bed. You walk down the hall, throwing lights on as you go, but you can’t find Dirk. He’s not in the bathroom and he’s not in his room, he’s not in the kitchen and not on the balcony. 

“Dirk?” you call you. 

There’s no response. By the front door, his shoes are gone. 

You throw on the closest sweater you can find and rush out the front door, not even closing it behind you. Your hand slams the button on the elevator, and it lights up, but while you’re hopping from foot to foot nervously you curse loudly with how fucking long it takes and you rush to the second elevator that opens as soon as you click the button. 

Why’d he leave? Is he having memory loss? Did he forget something in the car? Fuck, is he gonna—? No. No, you only read about that. He wouldn’t end himself. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. Right? Fuck, shit, what if he went to the roof instead? Now you don’t know which way to go. The elevator is already taking you down. God! Shit! 

You shove through the elevator in a panic, and you startle Damien the Doorman who was dozing off in his chair at the front lobby desk. 

“Have you seen Dirk?” you demand. 

“What?” He rubs his eye. “Yeah, he just came through. We chatted about my transition, which is weird, because I started so long ago, but then he left and said he was going to visit you at work.” 

“I’m obviously not at work!” you snap. 

“I don’t know celebrity schedules! Ya’ll are always coming in and out with weird shit and new outfits whether it’s day or not.” He huffs, but you know he’s not mad. You don’t even have to ask anything again, because he points behind him and says, “He took off down the street that way.” 

“He’s got memory-loss. Don’t let him leave again. Just call my apartment. Please.” 

Damien nods with more worry in his eyes now. “Yes, sir. Do you need any help?” 

“No. No, I’m good.” 

You’re out the front door in half a second. You know where Dirk is going. You sprint down the sidewalk towards the bus stop, knowing that Dirk must think he’s sixteen or something, coming to visit you at work like he always did when you both were trying to ignore how much you wanted to just kiss each other and hold each other. You first kissed him on the set of your movie two years ago in the privacy of a back hallway behind unused camera equipment. He was desperate, as if you had blown his mind with a single, firm kiss, his back to the wall and the breath from his nose on your skin. 

You hear vomiting. Across the street, Dirk is under a streetlight at the bus stop. He’s sitting on the bench, heaving between his legs onto the sidewalk. 

“Dirk!” 

He heaves again and you jay-run your ass to him, instantly grabbing his shoulders and his face, anywhere, just touching him and making him look at you with vomit on his chin. 

“Baby. Please. Don’t do that again. Oh, baby. You’re okay.” You kiss his forehead and his cheek and you use your sleeve to wipe his face. The smell doesn’t bother you right now. He looks so lost. “My baby, sweetie, don’t leave like that. God. You’re okay, baby. You’re okay.” 

You kiss his lips, and the puke doesn’t bother you. He just breathes deeply, his body shaking pretty hard. He’s always shaky when he’s nauseous. 

“I…” he says, voice raspy. “I wanted to see you at work.” 

With a laughing sob you say, “I know. You didn’t see the signs?” 

“Apartment was dark,” he mutters. 

“Oh, baby.” You sit next to him on the bench and take your sweater off, wrapping it around him. You kiss his head and his shoulder and his cheek and then wipe at his mouth again after he spits onto the sidewalk. You rub warmth into his slim arms and hold him close as he continues to shiver. 

“I think I’m gonna seize,” he slurs. 

“Okay. Okay.” Your own hands are shaky, like him, as you hold his body and lift him from the bench. You lay down on the sidewalk with him, holding his head safely in your lap so he doesn’t hurt it on the concrete, and then watch as he begins to jerk and wheeze. 

It’s too much. You end up causing an ambulance. You both need help. This is out of your hands, and you hate when you can’t do everything for him. Rose told you that. Sometimes you need to let professionals care for you child. 

He kicks a few times and throws one arm out. A little more vomit comes out from his mouth and you turn his head more to make sure it slips out onto your lap rather than back down his throat.

The seizure is over in about a minute. Dirk is still a little jerky and his breathing his a little deep. You hold his arm and stretch it out, rubbing his tense muscles and rolling your thumb in circles on his palm to get the stiffness out of him. You can hear wailing in the distance. You rub the stiffness out of his other hand next. Dirk moves a little jerkily onto his back, and he complains when you touch him to turn him on his side. If he wants to stay that way, fine. You massage his neck and his shoulder, feeling knots. 

“If the social taboo around our love didn’t exist, would you give me a ring?” Dirk asks. He whispers it, soft and harsh. 

You smile and stroke down his cheek. “Yes,” you breathe back. “Yes, of course. Might do it anyway.” 

“Gay,” he whispers back. 

You leans down and give him one of those Spider-Man kisses he always teases you for. He tastes like puke, but also he tastes like Dirk, and his breath his shaky from the seizure he was still coming out of, but you feel like nothing else in the world exists. It’s just Dirk lying on your lap in an endless void of you two. 

The ambulance is on the street now. You pull away from his lips and run your fingertips around his porcelain face. 

“We should move,” he murmurs. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. The country.” 

“By horses, of course.” 

“Of course.” 

The paramedics are hopping out of the ambulance. 

“I’ll look into it,” you say. 

Dirk’s shivering fingers squeeze at your arm and he smiles, even when you know a task like that is so tiring for him. A paramedic holds your shoulder, asking questions. Another is working with Dirk. You aren’t shaking anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i update and answer questions at my tumblr! (plajus.tumblr.com) also you look really cute today??? wow <3 (dirk is over 18)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DID NOOOT EDIT THIS. I am lazy. if you find mistakes, then oh well

Dirk stays in the hospital for two weeks. He suffered dehydration and malnutrition that night out under the street light, and you argue that he’s always dehydrated and suffering malnutrition, but the doctor says “it’s different.”

So, you set up shop in a private hospital room with a pull out couch that becomes your bed. Dirk’s got an IV in his chest port and one of those gowns you’ve grown used to seeing him in, and the only way he doesn’t feel ugly wearing them is when you tease that you like his ass hanging out underneath the ties down his spine.

Every other shower, the nurses let you do it. At least in this case they see you as a caring big brother, and you get the chance to be intimate with Dirk without anyone knowing. He’ll sit on the bench in the shower, but you can’t join him naked or others will get suspicious, so you just take your shirt off so you can reach your arms in and sponge down his body. In the bathroom is the place you two are safest to kiss. You lock lips with the shower water running down his thinning body, your hands stroking what you can and finding every sensation of his skin ethereal. He’s ethereal.

You two watch movies on your laptop all the time. At night, you spoon with him in the hospital bed. You stay up late watching dumb videos on your phone and you watch him fall asleep, your hand thumbing at the tube that leads up to the IV drip. You kiss the back of his smooth head and feel his heartbeat through his veins that bulge against his skin that’s tightening around his bones.

Machines beep in the different rooms. A nurse puts down a coffee cup out on the main countertop. Someone who can’t sleep is dragging an IV stand with them down towards the elevator. And under your hand, Dirk’s lungs expand and relax, repeatedly.

 

 

Dirk gets extra treatment since he’s staying longer in the hospital. Radiation and chemo and a new drug. For a while, it almost seems like he’s healing. As if he’s cured. You know it’s just the intense treatment, and that it will wear off soon enough as his brain continues to get worse, but he gains energy for a while.

You two drag his IV stand around the hallways and go for walks to keep his muscles working. Dirk loves the greenhouse garden on the first floor. There’s a koi pond in there, a piano, and gorgeous blooming flowers. There’s stained glass in the ceiling, and on sunny days the red and orange colors shine down on Dirk’s face, making shadows in his cheekbones as he makes up little tunes on the piano.

He could play any instrument if he wanted to. One year, in New York with Rose, Dirk picked up her violin when he was about eleven and began to play Fir Elise off the top of his head after some experimental plucking. He’s your genius.

“You’re a genius too, ya know,” Dirk says when you’re both eating yogurt in the garden. It’s cloudy, so the stain glass of angels around the sun sit dim above your heads.

“Sure,” you say.

“In different things. I have an ear for sound. Photographic memory. I can draw up music notes in my head and then make my hands respond to the meanings of each note. Math, too. I don’t ‘draw’ numbers in the air, but my brain can process the methods of getting answers very quickly. I don’t know. It’s different from art. You’re the art guy. You see deep shit about flowers, like how the colors contrast to show personalities, and my brain just wonders how the genes mixed to create that color. Do you know what I mean?”

You give Dirk the rest of your yogurt. He eats quickly, and you smile to see his appetite. It used to come and go so much.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” you say.

You snap pictures of Dirk next to the fountain, licking the plastic spoon. He complains that his ass is going to have stone imprints on each cheek when you stand. You take pictures of his ass when he does decide to stand. He throws a spoon at you.

 

 

You have Dirk’s birthday in the hospital. He plans on Skyping with all of his friends in the evening, but he wants to spend the morning with you. You get him a new beanie that has a patch of a robot on it, a new welder, a new sewing machine, and some bathroom sex. 

It happens when it’s least busy in the hospital, and you hold Dirk up against the wall with the light off, touching him everywhere and being gentle so you leave no bruises on him. He gets tired quickly and you both end up sitting on the floor, Dirk eventually in your lap and hands wrapped around you both until he can finish with a whimper that drives you crazy. 

When you both cum, you sit there for a while in the darkness. You rub up his thighs and feel goosebumps. You kiss his nose, feeling out his face with your lips. He brushes his own face against yours, and you feel his panting breaths on your cheeks and then on your neck. 

“My baby,” you whisper. 

His panting slows down. You hold him close, letting him rest on your shoulder, your palm firm but comforting up and down his spine. 

“Happy birthday,” you say. 

He kisses against your shoulder. 

You clean up before leaving the bathroom, making sure the blush in both of your cheeks and chests are gone and that everything is zipped, tied, and adjusted appropriately. Thankfully, no one is in the hospital room when you both emerge. 

Dirk Skypes with his friends later. You get lunch from McDonald’s because Dirk is craving something fatty and unhealthy. You call Rose on the drive and say Dirk is doing great and that he’s walking more and his personality is shining. 

Rose says “that’s great” but what she really means is “that always happens before the big downfall,” which is a lot for two words to actually mean, but you know her. She knows you. And you both know what you don’t want to see. 

At McDonald’s someone asks for a picture with you. You manage a light smile, exchange some polite words and tell the kid to keep up with their passions and then head back to the hospital with the fatty food in hand. Dirk is done Skyping when you’re back and is sunken low into his bed, rolling his IV tube gently between his teeth while watching Ghost Adventures on the laptop. You give him his share of the meal and sit with him next to his bed while three grown men scream about plants shifting in the wind. 

“How old were you when the AIDS crisis happened?” Dirk asks. 

“What?” 

“It was in the 80s, wasn’t it?” 

“Well… yeah. Yeah, I was born in 1980. I was under ten during the big rise of it and stuff. Why are you asking about AIDS?” 

“I dunno. I watched this documentary the other night. You were snoring and I felt sick—”

“You can wake me when you’re sick, you know.” 

“Trust me Bro, I’m fully aware. Anyway, it was basically a plague. Millions died, ya know? And there was this protest in Washington D.C. at the white house and they unveiled this quilt for remembrance of lives lost. But this one guy in the documentary, he had ashes. Of his loved one that died. Tons of them did. Hundred. They were all holding bone pieces and ashes of dead loved ones who died for AIDS.” 

You stop eating your fries. Your fingers touch Dirk’s shin, a thumb rubbing down the soft blond hair that stayed there. 

“Then the protest got really crazy,” Dirk continues, his eyes still on the laptop screen as if he’s actually watching the show. “Everyone was screaming and chanting, and they rushed towards the fence around the white house and the police were yanking at them, but they started chucking handfuls of their loved ones’ ashes onto the white house yard.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. It was intense.” 

“I kept your hair,” you say.

“What?” 

“When we shaved your hair. I kept some.” 

Dirk finally looks at you. You slip a few fingers under the bottom of his beanie to stroke around his ear. 

“Gonna put it in a locket?” he asks. 

“I won’t need to. ‘Cause you’re gonna be fine.” 

He scoffs and says, “We’re not doing this.”

“Give me my laptop.” 

“Fuck you, Zak gets possessed in this one.”

“Zak gets possessed in every episode, now give it to me.” 

Dirk whines, but you take your laptop away. He plays on his phone instead. You’re both silent for quite a long time, but you enjoy the silence you have with Dirk. There’s no awkwardness. It’s just safe. 

“Look at this,” you say, spinning the laptop around for Dirk. 

He stares at the screen where you’ve brought up a house on the market in Oregon. It’s not a mansion, but it’s not too small either. It has a pool, a yard, a back porch, and an actual garage. Dirk sits up when he sees the neighbor’s house in the back of the picture though. 

“It’s next to horse farm,” you say. “They board horses and stuff.” 

“Why are you looking?” 

“After your seizure you said you wanted to move, remember? After you beat this, we should. We should get out of here. Away from the cameras and the loud city and from all the grocery stores you’ve seized in.” 

He punches you in the arm, but it feels like a tap. You catch his hand and kiss on his knuckles. 

“We should do it after you’re better,” you mutter into his fingers. 

Instead of fighting you on his inevitable death, he squeezes your hand and whispers, “Okay.” 

 

 

In the middle of the night, you wake up from your pull out couch from the sound of Dirk making soft gasps. You rub your eyes and roll onto your stomach, staring towards his hospital bed. He’s rolled up on his side, the tube of his IV tugged past his face and his skinny fingers grabbing his head. 

“Baby?” you whisper. 

“Fuck,” he says, shoving his hat up and off. 

The room isn’t that dark. The moonlight is shining through the window past the thin curtains and dim lights in the halls stream in under the closed door. Machines blink softly. You sit up. You say Dirk’s name and he sobs. Maybe it’s a nightmare. You shuffle your socks across the floor to his bed and touch his arm. 

“Dirk.” 

“My head hurts,” he whispers. 

You get into bed with him. He gets headaches a lot. It must be a bad one, that’s all. You unwrap the IV from his face that got stuck and spoon him, your arms both gentle and secure. He continues to cry softly, his tears hitting your arm where he’s shoving his head. He holds his skull as if he wants to crush it in. 

“I’m worried,” you say after a minute. “I should get a doctor.” 

“I’m okay.” 

Except that he’s not, because he cries out and clutches back at his spine. This isn’t right. When you slip out of his bed, he cries out for you. With a sting in your eyes you kiss his hand and promise you’ll be right back. 

You call out for a doctor in the hallway, or a nurse, anyone. Your baby isn’t right. Dirk’s main case doctor, Dr. Peixes, is paged immediately. You step out of the way as a few move into the room past you, and your hands go to your head and your heart stutters on a beat when you see that Dirk has gone perfectly still. 

As if he’s a corpse. 

His eyes are open half-way, and his pupils are blown wide. Someone barks that they need to get him to the OR. No one is telling you what’s going on. They wheel his limp body past you, and someone holds you back, and you probably wake the whole floor with how you’re yelling. 

 

 

Dirk ended up having an aneurysm. You wonder how long it’s been growing in his brain. Why no one fucking caught it earlier. You snapped at his doctor, apologized right after, and then breathed and breathed and breathed to stop the panic attacking climbing up your spine. Why didn’t they know? They let it explode in his precious brain, filling it with blood. 

They fix it though. They tell you that they fixed it and that everything went just as perfect as they expected it too, and that it wasn’t even that serious of a brain bleed. 

When they let you back into your room, your palm covers your mouth as if you might scream, even if you feel no scream. He’s so beautiful. His scar is thick around his ear, held together with staples. The heart monitor beeps steadily. He’s so small. So fragile. Like a doll made of glass. You start to regret the ways you’ve hugged him too tightly. 

You sit next to the bed. You stroke down his smooth arm. His sweet lips are parted softly, and you touch his face so you can feel him breath. Another hand touches his chest. His lungs expand and relax. 

You don’t sleep. You talk to him and kiss his face. The scar is big. His brain was exposed and open, his skull sawed. You kiss his forehead. You kiss his lips. You let him sleep. 

 

 

Dirk wakes up a few hours later. He blinks slowly and makes a soft grunt, and you’re there instantly, touching his face. 

“Hi, baby. You’re okay. You’re here.” 

“Hng,” he says with a few more heavy blinks. 

“You had just a little surgery. You’re okay. Let me get a doctor. You’re okay. You’re as o-kay as a Fri-day. I’ve got you, fam. Be back in a second.” 

Dirk mutters something like “nerd” on your way out the door. 

You stay against the wall, biting your thumb as he’s given his checkup. He follows a pen with his eyes, squeezes the doctor’s hands, wiggles his toes, and says certain words and sentences aloud to show he can comprehend language and objects and other brain things that he probably understands himself and not you. 

Dr. Peixes asks to talk to you after it’s over, but you say you want to be with Dirk. She demands that she wants to talk to you. 

Dirk’s doctor says he should stay. She promises that they can make him extremely comfortable in this hospital and hopefully add on a little time before he… passes. 

“Dirk can choose,” you say immediately. There’s something lodged in your throat. Fucking— 

“I really think he should stay, or you should at least get a nurse at home. He’s really bad, Mr. Strider. He’s reaching the end.”

Part of you wants to yell and say she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she’s the one who went to school for eight years, who studied even longer about the brain, and has a few hundred surgeries on her record, so you say nothing for a bit. You rub your face. You need to shave. 

“Dirk can choose,” you say. 

Dirk chooses to go home. Dr. Peixes argues against it, but Dirk throws down some smart brain words that you don’t understand and he makes a deal that he gets to go home until Christmas is over. Part of you is extremely worried. What if he goes unconscious at home like he did here? Should you take some classes? 

 

 

After some recovery time, you and Dirk packed up everything that had shown up in the hospital room over the last month or so. As you put things down in your car, it scares you how much that hospital room was turning into an actual “room.” Like your own room at home with the phone chargers on the nightstand, your clothes on the floor, and your laptop on the chair. You’re both guilty and glad that you’re going home for the holidays. 

Dirk wears his beanie over his bandages when you leave the hospital, him relaxed back in the wheelchair. You lift him and put him in the passenger’s seat. He’s finally wearing real clothes rather than that gown, and he feels so comfortable in your arms, like a stuffed animal made with beads inside that fall limp and heavy. Part of you wants to pin him in the back seat and kiss him until he can’t say any normal English words anymore, and the other wants to find a special box and put him on display like the porcelain doll he is so that nothing can ever, ever damage his perfection. 

He’s too tired to put the tree up at home. You have a new packet of instructions on how to care for your dying baby now. You clean up the thick, curving wound on his scalp and put new bandages on. You make him dinner. You make him take his medicine. You tuck him into your bed and play Lion King. He’s been really into it lately. 

“You should get the house anyway,” Dirk mutters against your neck when you’re cuddling him in the dark. 

“Hm?” 

“The house in Oregon. When I’m gone. You should move. You should get out of here. Paint. Take pictures.” 

“Okay.” 

“Promise?” 

“Promise.” 

“Just like that?” 

“I’ll go to Mars if you want me too, baby.” 

You smooch against his forehead and hold him until he sleeps. 

 

 

Before Christmas comes, a routine sits in. Dirk has five seizures before Christmas, pukes forty-six times, and loses his memory twelve times. Every morning you give him his medicine, you make him eat breakfast, and you cook a second breakfast if he can’t keep it down. You clean the wound on his head and always kiss it before you bandage it. You make lunch. He takes his medicine. You make dinner. Meds. He sleeps. Every other day, you bathe him. 

He puts the tree up with you. You two always wrap Cal around the top since you don’t believe in the traditional story behind Christmas, but just like putting a tree up and getting gifts for each other. Dirk puts up the bottom ornaments since he’s tired and wants to sit on the floor, and you put on the ones up top. All ornaments are ironic of course. There’s a Sharknado ornament, some Disney ones, shitty ones of SB&HJ, Dirk’s old craft project ornaments from when he was in elementary school, and random cut outs of logos from your favorite Chinese restaurants, held up with paper clips as the ornament hangers. It’s honestly the most gorgeously ironic tree to ever exist. 

A few days before Christmas, Dirk tells you he wants to have sex. You’re so scared, though. He can tell. The day before he was nauseous and puking a lot. You two had spent the day in the bathroom, Dirk in your lap as you hung out in front of the toilet where he felt the most comfortable. Now he wants you. 

“I can’t,” you admit. “I’m gonna…” 

“You’re not going to break me,” he whispers in your ear. Then he licks it. 

“You’re glass.” 

“I’m human.”

“I can’t.” 

“I want you in me. Please. One more time, please.” 

One more time. 

One more time. 

Okay. You take him into your arms. You undress him, and he’s skin and bones, a garden of bruises. You taste scabs in his mouth. His breathing is heavy very early. You can hardly pin your weight on him, scared you’ll feel him crack in half, and your shaky breath in his neck is not pleasure, but fear and pain. 

He finishes, but you can’t. Sometimes you just don’t finish, and Dirk knows that, but he knows this is also different. You hate yourself, because Dirk is whispering in your ear, comforting you, and you’re crying into his brittle body. That’s not your job. But you let yourself have this. 

 

 

The Lalondes come over for Christmas. You clean up Dirk’s room so that the two of them can share it and Dirk stays in your room, like he always has now.

Dirk insists on coming to the air port, and he gets out of his wheelchair when he sees Roxy and Rose, moving in to immediately wrap his arms around his shorter friend. They talk while you envelop Rose into your chest, smooching all over her face while she calls you an “egg.” She licks your shades in revenge before pulling away to fix her bobbed hair.

You pick up her bags to help and Roxy is pushing Dirk’s wheelchair, riding on the back like it’s a scooter.

“How is it?” Rose asks as you both walk behind the two younger ones.

“Didn’t you see him?”

“Yes. He looked happy.”

You sigh and put an arm around Rose’s thin shoulders. You and her both share some incredibly pale genes, same as Dirk, but Roxy came from a whoopsie one-night-stand eighteen years ago, so her skin is much darker. Roxy uses it as an excuse to say that Kanaya, Rose’s fiancée, is also her biological mom.

This causes you to change the subject:

“How’s Kanaya?”

“She’s doing a talk on 'Muslim Feminism in the U.S.' in Chicago. She’ll arrive before Christmas Eve. Sound good?”

“Yeah. How about I just give Roxy my office then, that way she can sleep alone.”

“She’ll probably want to stay up late with Dirk.”

You shake your head, still holding Rose against your side. “No. No, he has to be in my room. All his stuff is there. His medicine. The drip. He sleeps a lot.”

“I’m still in shock,” Rose says. “About the surgery.”

“God, me too. Scared the fuck out of me.”

“I’m talking about the one coming up in January.”

“What?” 

Rose’s violet eyes widen. You both stop in the middle of the airport. Roxy and Dirk have gone outside now, but you stare at the woman next to you with a sinking feeling in your gut. Rose understands that you don’t know now. So she steps closer. Speaking softly. 

“He told Roxy. Roxy told me. I thought you obviously knew too. I’m usually last in the circle of secrets.”

“Rose.”

“He’s planning on a surgery in January. To remove everything.”

“He can’t. He can’t, it’s in too far, it’s too big, they’ve said that a million times, he’s too weak, he can’t survive that. There must be a huge mistake.”

“Roxy said he’s terrified. Of getting too weak. Said he’s going to die anyway, so he might as well try.”

You rub your hand up your face, under your shades, and back down. Rose runs her hand up your arm and to your neck where she tugs you in to hold you.

“Later,” she says. “Okay? They’re waiting for us. Let’s go now.”

 

 

That night, you cook. You’ve gotten good at cooking for Dirk ever since he wasn’t allowed all that take-out stuff anymore. You have a few drinks with Rose and chat about things other than cancer, but it always goes back to the cancer. Dirk and Roxy play around with all of his tech stuff in his room, and you wonder if he’s talking about it. His death surgery. You rip up all your nails that night.

With Rose and Roxy setting up Dirk’s room to sleep in, you give Dirk a shower. You soap him down while he sits in the plastic chair, his eyes closed, and his bare scalp red from the hot water. His staples came out from his scar, but it’s still thick and angry. You kiss around it and Dirk hums, reaching out to touch your leg.

“Do you want to tell me anything?” you mutter.

“What?” 

“You heard me.”

He doesn’t say anything. You dry him off. When you rub the towel between his toes, you kiss his foot, and then slide his socks on. You put prescription cream on his large scar, put gauze on, and then tuck his favorite black beanie over that. He doesn’t speak when he brushes his teeth, or when he uses his mouthwash. You carry him to bed. He takes his meds. You change. You crawl in with him. You turn the light off.

“It’s early,” he whispers. “You can still hang out with Rose and Roxy for a few more hours.”

“No. I’m okay here.”

You press your nose and mouth against him. You can smell him from his beanie, and your lips are against his ear. Your hand feels him. His ribs, his stomach, his chest, along his neck. He lets out a shaky breath, and you’re worried you’re turning him on. You’re too scared to try sex again. You keep hearing this cracking noise in your head when you think about it, knowing it could be his spine.

“Gonna die anyway,” Dirk whispers when you just start to doze off. “It’s gonna be real slow. Gonna shit myself and lose my memory and get really mad at nothing all the time. It’s gonna be painful. I’m—” He takes in a deep breath, and his voice breaks. “I’m so scared.” 

It breaks your own heart. He must be fucking terrified.

“Baby,” you whisper, kissing against his ear. You pull him in, and he puts his freezing fingers under your shirt, against your stomach. He’s trying to muffle his crying between bitten lips.

“Okay,” you agree. “I understand. It’s your brain. Your body. And I can afford it. Fuck, if you wanna transfer yourself to a robot body someday, I’ll pay for that too.”

He scoffs out a laugh between his tears.

“Fuck, baby. If you wanna try, then let’s try. I’ve got you.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. But it’s gotta be Peixes. She knows brains better than I know my own dick.”

He scoffs again and pinches your stomach. You grin and kiss across his cheeks that are dipping away with his skinniness, but he still smells like himself. You think about the locks of hair in your nightstand. You think about that house in Oregon. 

 

 

The next day, Kanaya shows up too. Dirk loves the family atmosphere, and he helps Kanaya cook for dinner, and Rose helps you wrap presents in the back room. She wants to know everything of course, the dear therapist, and you tell her everything, because for God’s sake, she calls you her brother even after knowing you’re in love with your little brother. She’s perfect.

You all watch Birdemic, and Roxy starts crying from how bad it is. Then you watch the classic Charlie Brown Christmas. Dirk wants to watch Lion King. Again. You all drink, eat cookies, and then go to sleep. 

You go through the nightly routine. You spoon Dirk in bed, his cold feet wrapped in wool Christmas socks pressed to your shins. You kiss the back of his neck and feel him breath, hand on his stomach. You want to melt him inside of you and protect him forever. 

 

 

On Christmas morning you make cinnamon rolls and coffee for everyone. Roxy’s curls are a crazed mess that she doesn’t care to control, and Rose has given a big “hell no” to any lipstick. It’s a pajama-yawning-present morning. You were up pretty late last night after feeling Dirk fall asleep, and for good reasons. You need a lot of coffee to get yourself going.

In a circle around the living room, wrapping paper is ripped apart. New laptops and CDs and leather journals and fancy mittens. Roxy almost rips your hair out with her hugs when she gets a collection of twenty different cat socks. Kanaya is trying on an ironic Twilight-themed hijab that you custom ordered yourself. Rose is opening a present from her daughter. That’s when you stand, kiss Dirk’s head, and tell him you have to get one more thing for him.

When you come back, Roxy is practically squealing. Dirk is weak, but he’s laughing through it, hands outstretched as you put down the confused tabby cat into his arms, the one you had been hiding in the laundry room for half of the night. He laughs again and cradles the nervous creature, cooing to her and itching at her ear. There’s fur growing back around her left eye that that had been removed in surgery, the scar healing like Dirk’s head, and he kisses the spot and says, “My baby Dorito.” 

“No,” you say.

“What?” 

“You can’t name this disabled cat Dorito.”

“It’s HIS Christmas present,” Roxy protests, lying on the floor with her new cat socks waving in the air. “He can name her whatever he wants!”

“It’s true,” Kanaya adds, and her fiancée just nods.

“I cannot believe the disrespect,” you sigh.

Dirk just grins. He follows his new cat around all day. When she explores the hallway, he shuffles along, and even when she uses the litter, he waits. Finally, he doesn’t want to watch Lion King for once. He says he has his own lion now. 

You make Christmas Tacos for dinner, which are just normal tacos, but on Christmas of course. Roxy drags out Cards Against Humanity, and everyone is, and also isn’t, surprised when Kanaya lays down the dirtiest cards. Dirk even looks up cheesy family games to play, and you’ve never been so happy acting like a ten-year-old when you’re really thirty-seven.

You take a million pictures of him. Not a million, but two hundred or so. He smiles so much that day, and he doesn’t flick you off when you point the camera at him. You have pictures of Roxy smooshing their cheeks together, of Dirk cradling Dorito like a baby, of Rose and Kanaya kissing, and an extra hundred of you zooming in on Dirk’s face when you catch him just… smiling. You want to frame every single one.

 

 

That night, Dirk’s new one-eyed tabby is sleeping by your feet, curled up and purring. Your nose is touching Dirk’s in the darkness.

“I can feel the vibration,” he whispers, “of her purring.”

“Me too,” you whisper back. “I can feel your heart, too.”

“I can feel yours, too.”

“You ever put your ears under the water in the bath?” you ask. “You can hear your own heartbeat.”

“Yeah. Like it’s everywhere.” He pauses. “Bro?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever farted in the shower?”

You snort. 

“It’s so much stinkier than when you fart anywhere else. ‘Cause the shape of the water molecule can hold an entire fart molecule. It makes it heavier on our smell receptors. Fun fact.”

You kiss him, just smiling. He can feel your smile, and he kisses back. His thin fingers hold your jaw and you kiss his palm. His wrist. You put him on his back, and you kiss him everywhere. Neither of you get turned on for any sex. He just relaxes and breathes slowly as you kiss his stomach and each rib, and inside of his elbow and his hip. He’s perfect everywhere.

“You still awake?” you murmur.

“A little,” he responds.

Down the hall, you can hear a slightly drunk Rose being lead to bed by Kanaya. You hover over Dirk, stroking back on his scalp and running your thumb over his chapped lips. You put some Chap stick on him and kiss the light cherry flavor before finally laying down beside him again. You think for a while as he breathes. Still. You can see the light from the battery pack of your laptop. You remember what you did earlier.

“I bought the house,” you say.

“What house?” 

“The one by the farm in Oregon. I bought it.”

His voice is a weak, the softest you’ve heard, but it’s the strongest and the happiest at the same time:

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoooooo finals are almost done!!!! also my friend elliot did some really cute art: http://staticghostie0.tumblr.com/post/154045658420/ive-had-a-pretty-bad-day-so-i-figured-might-as  
> i post updates and chat at my tumblr, plajus.tumblr.com  
> anyway, hope you'll enjoy! the fifth chapter will be an epilogue c:


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DIDN'T EDIT THIS, SORRY.

Your baby is in a hospital gown, again. He’s wearing a Christmas sweater that you bought for him, and it has a robot with a Santa hat on it, and the gown sticks out from underneath. He has thick wool socks to cover his toes that are always freezing, and when you relax with Dirk in his hospital room, his feet are always in your lap while you rub them, heel to toe. 

Damien the Doorman is taking care of Dorito back home.

You rub his feet now. Thumbs rub in deep to get blood flowing through while Dirk rests back in the bed, another tube connected to his IV port. He’s got a second in his arm. There’s tabby cats on his socks. You kiss his toe. 

“Smell bad?” Dirk asks. 

“Horrible,” you say. “I just lost my sense of smell.” 

He snorts at you and goes back to texting on his phone, talking to his friends. Maybe even saying goodbyes. In a few hours, he’s going to be wheeled away from you and into the OR, and he might not come out breathing. Probably won’t. Dirk keeps telling you not to get your hopes up, but why not? Why not feel ten times more amazing if he comes out with blinking eyes? 

“When do you move?” Dirk asks. 

“You mean, when do we move?” 

“Sure.” 

You sigh. “When you’re healed and ready for travel. Maybe the end of February.” 

You have his hair in your pocket, wrapped in a rubber band, like those fake fiber hairs at the store to show you how the hair dye is going to show up. 

It’s late. It’s dark, but the parking lot lights are coming through the blinds. His surgery is at five in the morning, and neither of you can sleep. You both got bored of watching YouTube, so now he’s just texting while you massage his feet, but it’s making your stomach hurt. You’re thinking about losing him. It hurts your stomach so much. You’re ready to puke. It’s coming up. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” you say. 

“Huh? Okay. Help me up.” 

“Hold on, I’ll pull the wheelchair over.” 

“No, I can walk.” 

“You sure?” 

“Mm-hm.” 

You help him up onto his feet and with some adjusting you’re able to drag along his IV stand, your other hand holding his. His skinny fingers fit between yours, hopefully warming him up. He shuffles along slowly with you through the dark hospital where nurses just glance up with that brief, polite, close-lipped smile, and then go back to their paperwork. 

For a while, you two hang out in the elevator. Dirk pushes the top floor, then the bottom, and then back and forth until every button is lit up, and then you both sit on the floor of the elevator and feel the lifting and the tugging fall, fingers still laced together. 

“When you were little, you’d always lay on your tummy in the elevator,” you say. 

“I remember.” 

“Garden?”

“Sure.” 

You help him stand again. He’s gotten so much worse since Christmas, and you want to go back to the room and get his wheelchair, but he refuses. He wants to walk. You push along his IV stand and shuffle along through the dim lights. Patients cough in their rooms. 

You let go of Dirk’s hand while he continues to walk on ahead. You go still and look down a passing hallway where you hear light sobbing, and you’re drawn closer. Peeking around a corner, there’s a woman weeping on the floor outside of a hospital room, and a man exits the room to join her, clutching her and whispering in against her next. Doctors talk inside the room. You can only guess what just happened to them. This is the cancer treatment wing of the hospital. 

“Bro.” 

You jump at the whisper and turn around. Dirk is standing there, watching you. He can hear the sobbing too. The mother wails out “my baby.” 

Dirk presses up towards your face, and you touch his chest to stop him. 

“There’s cameras,” you say. 

He leans up anyway, kissing you while a family grieves. It’s very brief, and then he tugs on your arm. 

“Garden,” he says.” 

“Okay.” 

 

 

The garden is very dim, and the stained glass above your heads are low with the color of moonlight. The fountain in the center bubbles and splashes, never turning off, and the piano just sits untouched, yet covered in fingerprints from people who have practiced all their life, and fingerprints from the children who just want to hear the random sounds. 

Dirk’s IV stand rolls over cool, stone tiles. The flowers all around hold so much more color than your brother’s sunken, pale face. He goes to the piano. He tries to play, but his hands are too shaky and won’t move fast enough to make the melody he wants, so you sit down with him and kiss his shoulder before trying to play something for him. You’re not as talented as Dirk, but you know a song or two from your more musical days. Dirk puts his head on your shoulder, his body molding into your side as you wrap an arm around him to reach the higher keys. 

When you finish the song, only making about five mistakes, Dirk asks right away, “How’s Dorito?” 

“Damien texted a while ago and said she’s fine, but she’s whining at the door. She wants to go home.” 

“Poor baby.”

“She’ll be okay. When you’re done with your surgery, I’ll sneak her in.” 

“You have to stop saying ‘when.’ It’s so bad for your mind. It’s going to hurt a million times worse if it doesn’t work. You heard Peixes. It’s less than five percent.”

“Yeah, but she’s the most talent neurosurgeon in the fucking world. Derek Shepherd is a child with a plastic scalpel compared to her.” 

You catch Dirk’ smiling, and it heals cracks inside of your heart. You kiss his forehead and breathe him in, your hands firm on his arm and his hip, holding him like a doll to your chest. He’s so small under his sweater. 

“No last words,” Dirk says. “Okay? I dunno, let’s pretend this is just another chemo appointment.” 

“Anything for you.” 

“I’m so hungry.”

“I know. No eating though. You still have one more hour.” 

He sighs heavily, and you help him stand up. He’s done enough walking. You consider carrying him back to the room, but he refuses and continues to take his time shuffling down the hallways and back to the elevator where you two ride up and down for about ten minutes. Then you finally go to the room, untouched like you left it. 

“Don’t let me sleep,” Dirk says as you help him lay down in bed. 

“I promise.” 

You lay down with him in bed, both of you facing each other. You stroke his face and rub up and down his back, and you let him close his eyes, but you ask questions every five minutes to make sure he doesn’t pass out. You both hear an ambulance siren outside. You hear them every hour or so. 

“Oregon will be nice,” you say. 

“Hmm.”

“I’ll buy you a horse, baby. I’ll wrangle you a fucking black stallion out of the wild if you want one. Fuckin’ Black Beauty for my darling boy. We can board them right next door at the horse farm next door, and I’ll pay for all your lessons, and when your hair grows back I’ll do it up all pretty with flowers and buy you boots so that you look really good for the horse shows, and you’ll win every single one.” 

“Hng.”

“Stay awake,” you whisper, kissing his parted lips. 

“I’m awake,” he breathes back. 

“You listening to me?” 

“Yeah. Black Beauty. Horse shows.” 

“Good. We can make out in one of the horse stalls, like some weird cowboy gay novel. Maybe in the tackle room while you sit on a saddle. We can go for trail rides and go out for picnics in the woods, and we can have sex by a creek like two Wild West rogues. You still awake?” 

“Mm-hm. Keep goin’.”

“And I’ll get you a ring. I’ll make it opal, because I know you like that.” Your hand slips under his sweater, rubbing up and down his cold, thin arm. “We can wear them in the house, or maybe when we’re out in public we’ll wear them on different fingers. Rose can give us some fake ass ceremony. Horses will probably be involved. Dorito will be the ring-bearer, obviously. You’ll wear a flower crown. Obviously. Still awake?” 

“Mm-hm.” 

“I’ll make you coffee every morning. And I’ll get back into my art, I promise. You were right about my job last year. It was mine when I first started, but people started changing my work so much over the years. They were all excited to put an impact on a movie with my name on it, and it turned into money and how much merch we could sell rather than changing the world. For a while it was about money to take care of you, and I didn’t even like what I was putting out. It felt like an office job in a way... You still listening?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I remember painting and doing art on my tablet when you were a child. Remember when you sat on my lap and you’d tell me to draw silly things? Like a cat swallowing a balloon and they start to float away? And all the other cats have to help them down. Remember that?” 

“Yeah.”

“And I made that comic of it. That was fun. I made a blog. I wanna do that again. I’ll do that in Oregon. I’ll paint and do photography again, and you can have the entire basement and turn it into a workshop and you can make amazing robots and stuff.” 

“Mr. Strider?” 

You twist over and see that Dr. Peixes is standing in the doorway. You didn’t know that much time had passed. You sigh heavily and give her a nod before you turn and kiss Dirk’s forehead, giving his arm a light squeeze. 

“Ready?” 

“No,” Dirk says. 

“Me either.” 

“Good. Let’s do this.” 

With a sad smile, you slip out of the bed. You hold Dirk’s hand as they prep him, and Dirk tiredly stares at you the whole time. You want to kiss each of his knuckles, and you want to take them into your mouth. You want to kiss down his stomach and brush your nose up and down his thigh and press his cold feet to your warm stomach and give him everything. 

When they’re ready to push the bed out, Dirk squeezes your hand and says, “Don’t come with. Stay here.” 

“Just to the elevator,” you say. 

“Close your eyes.” 

“Just to the—”

“Close your eyes.” 

“Dirk,” you beg. “No, just to the elevator, please, I—”

“Close them.” 

“Baby—”

“For me.” 

Fuck, that’s not fair! Your eyes are stinging painfully, and you close your eyes. You close them so tightly and you whisper that you love him. Lots and lots. The nurses and the doctors are watching the famous Dave Strider sob and fall apart. Dirk’s thumb rubs inside of your palm. 

Dirk isn’t saying anything. He lets go of your hand, and you can’t breathe. You lean back against the wall and clutch your chest. 

The last thing you taste of Dirk was the smooth, soft, chilly skin of his curved forehead. 

The last thing you hear from Dirk is his begging for you to close your eyes. 

The last thing you smell is the coconut body wash on his skin from when your face was buried in his neck, cuddled on the bed. 

The last thing you feel is his thin hand, each finger fragile and ethereal, like an angel blessing you.

The last thing you see is his radiant face, sunken cheeks, his loving, loving smile, a sore on his upper lip, cracked down the middle, and his sunset eyes looking past everything and only at you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next/last chapter will be an epilogue! you can check for updates or just chill at my tumblr, plajus.tumblr.com c: (btw this whole fanfic was based off of an rp i had, and i wish i had contact with them!)


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was too lazy to edit again

There are no blaring horns outside when you wake up. No roaring highways, no crazy people on street corners screaming about the end of the world. No. You wake up to a Chickadee crying out from the back porch where you hung up a bird feeder. You hear wind rush lightly through the trees that line the side of the property, and you wonder if it’s caused apples to fall from the one apple tree growing near the corner of the backyard pool. 

You’re so comfortable in your big bed. You sigh out through your nose and stretch a hand out to the spot next to you. 

It’s empty and cold. 

You peel your eyes open. To the left of your hand is Dorito, curled up. You got her a new collar with a little metal Dorito chip hanging on it with her name and your number on it, and she blinks her one good eye at you before she meows and stands up to stretch, assuming that you’re coming with her too. 

So, you do. You get up. 

You take a shower by yourself, except for Dorito who sits on the sink counter to watch you through the glass like a weirdo. She likes to lick up the water after you’re done in the tub. You change into some jeans and a t-shirt and walk around in your socks through the house. It’s nice to think house. You’ve never really had your own house. Always apartments. You love your house. 

You brew coffee in the kitchen and the cat whines until you throw a treat at her. 

The home is so nice. You have your own garage. The living room is smaller than your old penthouse living room, but it’s still the perfect amount of roomy. There’s even a real fireplace. You’ve used it quite a few times. 

You love the back porch. You have a half-finished canvas out there. There’s paint stains down on the wood, and one of your brushes still hasn’t been washed, but you’ll eventually get to it. There’s papers lying across the kitchen counter where you’ve been working on a new comic, one about a sick boy and his one-eyed cat. 

The coffee is finished and you put down the page of the comic you were looking at to pour in a shit-ton of sugar and milk. A little AJ. 

You pour a second mug. More sugar and milk. You mix in some OJ and leave it across from you on the counter. 

Your finger circles the barstools as you walk through the kitchen and towards the porch doors. You pick up your phone that you left by the toaster and see that Rose has messaged you a few times and sent you a picture of a meme she had made of Dorito. 

You reach the porch doors. The sky is pouring rays of sunlight. The pool is glittering and the ironic ducky inner tube is rocking on the water. You used a riding lawn mower for the first time ever when you moved here, and you did it shirtless with a cowboy hat on for irony. Even with a piece of straw out of your mouth. 

Dirk took pictures of it. 

You spot him, all the way over by the edge of the fence that belongs to the neighbor’s farm. He’s using his shirt to carry apples like a kangaroo pouch and feeding them to three horses that have crowded around. The horses there have come to recognized Dirk immediately, and all he has to do is approach the fence to get their attention. 

A smile spreads on your face. Dorito whines to go outside so you slide the porch door open and let her run out, her collar bell ringing. You lean on the railing and keep watching, sip from your coffee cup and put down the second OJ cup next to you while you wait for Dirk to smooch at the animals’ big faces and let them chew up the apples. You make him wash his hands whenever he comes back from touching those things. 

He rides there every other day. He has this favorite chestnut horse who has big white sock colorings. Dirk says he loves the “plain” looking ones. He doesn’t know it yet, but you bought that horse for his upcoming birthday. 

“That’s the hottest cowboy I’ve ever seen!” you yell. 

Dirk turns around and he grins. He waves at you. His hair is pulled back into a small ponytail, and his cheeks are full of color. He kisses his favorite horse goodbye on the snout and starts walking back towards your home, Dorito now bouncing happily at his feet. She walks along the railing when Dirk comes up the stairs to the porch, and without hesitation you grab Dirk around the waist and yank him in close to press a firm kiss to his lips, and when you feel him smile against you, your entire insides heat up. 

“You’re so cute when you sleep,” Dirk says and takes his mug to sip at. 

“You’re ugly when you sleep. It’s disgusting. It’s why I don’t want to try somnophilia with you.” 

He punches you in the arm. 

You laugh and you both sit out on the porch together. You watch the sun rise towards noon while two horses play in the pasture next door and Dorito chases down a mouse by a fallen tree, her head popping out of holes in the log. He holds your hand. His fingers are still bony, but they’re warm, and you stroke between his knuckles and feel the smoothness of his fingernails that he doesn’t rip at anymore. 

When your mugs are empty, you go inside. Dirk says he’s going to work on programing new info into his new AI who he’s called AR. He starts to walk towards the basement where his entire work area is set up, but you catch his arm and yank him back. You kiss him and keep walking until his back slams to the wall, and you know he won’t bruise up from it. Your thigh shoves between his own thighs, and he whimpers when you pin his wrists back, but he doesn’t fight you. He melts into it, immediately going submissive and letting you lick and bite his lips and suck down his neck, and he tells you to shut up when you tease about how he’s already rocking against you. 

You grab his thighs that are made of muscle and fat and hike him up, his legs wrapped around your waist. Your kisses are hot and heavy, and he pants into your mouth, and you know he’s not going to bruise along his spine as you cup it, and you carry him down to your bedroom, the one you both share, and you slam the door closed with your foot, because you know Dorito came back inside with you and that psycho cat has a habit of sitting on the dresser and just watching you two. 

You throw Dirk on the bed and he laughs when he bounces and then you settle between his legs and rest your weight on him, something you used to be unable to do. His hands are yanking your shirt up and off and you do the same to his. You kiss the scar where his IV port used to be and around his chest and up to his neck while his breathing turns heavier. 

While your lips meet again, tongues feeling each other out, your hand runs up through his hair. You can feel the thick, curving scar. It’s healed, hidden under the soft, golden locks. You threw out the lock you used to keep wrapped in a rubber band, because you have the real thing here, held tight in your fist so that you can tilt his head back and worship his precious, fragile neck with your mouth. You take as much time as you can just worshipping him. Praising his beautiful body. You want to kiss ever joint, and part of you wants to cradle his brain in your hands, his healthy brain, his brain that doesn’t make him seize anymore, the one that makes him remember everything, like your first time with him, or your first kiss with him, or the first time you showed up at school to pick him up and had him ride in the bike basket. He remembers it all, all the time. 

There’s no one else for each other besides each other, and you hardly ever buy condoms anymore. His back arches into a beautiful curve, like a bridge that connects the pleasure of his groin up to his beautiful, beautiful brain, as you enter him. You keep your bodies flush together, because you know how much it turns Dirk on to have your weight on him as you yank his thighs higher up so that you can slide into him easier, getting the right angle that makes him cry out and gasp. 

You want this to be one of those times you can make him finish while you’re inside him. You want to finish with him. Dorito is meowing at the door, and Dirk’s laugh turns into a loud moan as you pick up your pace and brace your chest into his without any fears of breaking him in half. He’s strong now, nails clutching your back as you both lose yourselves, his voice euphoric in your ear. Even though your thighs are tired, you keep up your pace into the same spot that’s making Dirk thrash his arms, looking for a spot to grab and squeeze from the intense pleasure you’re spiking through him. 

He yells out your name and you crash your mouths together, and you swallow his moans down, and you let his desperate, gripping fingers melt into your flesh, and you keep thrusting when you feel him cum across his stomach and in your hand. You finish inside of him on purpose, because it’s a great excuse to take a shower with him after. 

You pull out and while he gasps for air you kiss across his body and leave a prayer with each peck. You meet with his lips and he groans softly, return each slow, wet kiss. You make out with him for a few quiet minutes, but when Dorito yowls at the door again Dirk giggles softly into your mouth. 

“Shower,” you say. 

“You showered already.” 

“I’ll blow you in there.” 

“Oh man, you’re really making me think. That’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said, Bro. A blow job over some lunch is totally what I want.” 

“Fine, fine. Shower and then I’ll make us a good meal, yeah? But we gotta go shopping today.” 

You keep kissing his face while you speak. It’s so beautiful. You kiss over his eyelids. Perfect little sunsets. 

“We need more wine,” Dirk says. 

“I know. We’ll stock up.” 

The cat whines again. 

“She’s so fucking annoying,” you say. 

“You bought her,” Dirk says. “Merry Christmas.” 

You blow a raspberry on his neck and he grins, dragging you down next to him. You spend another fifteen minutes just cuddling with him. You brush your hands across his body that must be made from the stain glass, like the roof of the hospital garden, but it’s held together with ethereal steel. You brush your nose around his ear and kiss the curve of his jaw. 

Somehow, Dorito pushes the door open and she hops on the bed, lying across Dirk’s bare leg. You play with Dirk’s hair and stroke the scar hidden in that thick field of blond. You turn your head, kissing his sweet temple. You taste his sweat. You taste him. 

“I love you,” you mutter. 

“I love… pancakes,” he whispers back. 

“I love… your butt-ugly face. When I eat out your ass, sometimes I think I’m making out with your mouth because they look so similar.” 

He punches your chest and you groan, but you’re laughing. You roll over on top of Dirk and he starts laughing that gorgeous sound, and you kiss him until the laugh is just little giggles and moans. You carry him yourself to the shower where Dorito perches on the counter once more. 

The sun is bright in the window, and since your home is so secluded, you leave the blinds up. You watch Dirk step into the shower first and just smile as you stare. He tells you to stop being a creep and waves at you to join him. You do. You wash his hair and watch the way the water clings to his pale eyelashes over his bright, blinking eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, all done! hope ya'll like it. my tumblr is plajus.tumblr.com if you have questions or just want to bother me. you're all also very cute and nice


End file.
